Sydney has it in his head I should be up at about, oh, somewhere around six thirtyish in the morning. And he thinks then he should go back to bed. I guess he has heard me say that I like the sunlight of mid-summer early mornings when the whole day stretches out ahead of you, fresh and ready to be lived . . . and the house is quiet. But, Sydney, it’s cloudy this morning . . . and I clearly explained I wanted to just lie with my head cuddled down under the blanket some more. Of course, Sydney feels he knows what is best for me, so I am up, as in UP. He, by the way is napping.

I’m here on the corner of the sofa with my feet stretched out along the cushions and my laptop on my, well, lap. Checking the news and looking into iphoto.

This is a field of mustard grass (I think) in Fountain County. At this time of the year, quite a few fields look like this around Kingman during Memorial Day week. I think it’s lovely – these big open expanses of yellow lying close to the Wabash River. But wait, I just realized they ARE yellow, just like the armies of dandelions I have been fighting. But, look, they don’t have those awful ugly dandelion leaves that drive me crazy. And, probably, when their blooms fail, they don’t make the whole area look like a derelict yard of puffballs. You have to admit dandelions in the puff ball stage look like nature’s dust bunnies.

But enough of that. We ate lunch in Veedersburg at the Bus Stop, the same place we ate last year. I feared then maybe there would not be enough business to keep them going, but I was wrong. I had to circle the block to find a place to park and they have a professional new menu, all shiny and everything.

And a rustic screen door showing through the window of an aged heavy door painted orange. I’m rustic . . . and my new hair color is showing a bit of orange as well, so I guess I fit in okay.

Now, here is my cousin, Susie. Most people call her Sue now, but to me she will always be Susie.

She had a story to tell on herself. Seems she needed to call a member of her family and so punched the name on her cell phone. Well, she could hear the connection being made and then her house phone started ringing so she had to hang up. But she got there too late and whoever had called had hung up. So she waited awhile and then called again; the same thing happened. At this point I asked how many times this happened and she said “Five” and I thought, “We’re related.” She was accidentally calling herself, of course.

Oh, here’s a picture of my great-grandparents grave in the same cemetery where my dad is buried.

I suppose it might seem morbid to some, this posting of a gravestone, but hey they’ve been dead a long time and it was in the natural order of things. He was in the Civil War and, look at his birthday . . . I was born just shy of what would have been his hundredth birthday. Actually, there’s a continuity about it: he’s buried where he son lies, and his grandson and now his great-granddaughter is coming to see his grave. My cousins, Susie, Glenda and Ann are in the same boat – their mother, my dad’s sister Mary, is buried in that cemetery too.

Now I have to go transfer the pictures my husband’s brother (LZP)  sent from Harmony Cemetery in Illinois, just east of the Mississippi River. LZP, you will remember, is the instigator behind the dandelion resistence and has included a picture of where he gathered the flowers for Harmony . . . It was Flower-ama. I don’t know . . . the name just struck Der Bingle and me as funny.

See ya.